


Bodice Ripper

by YamiTami



Category: Hogan's Heroes
Genre: M/M, actual bodices must be ripped, as usual, i should not be allowed to write fics i think of on a whim, then i accidentally plot, this whim was, way pre-Newgan, write a fic in the theme of a bodice ripper with the most inappropriate pairing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-03 03:02:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1064974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/YamiTami/pseuds/YamiTami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I only have two things to say about this fic: one, anytime I write crackfic I somehow make it plot and two, it's not anywhere near as interesting as it sounds.</p><p>2013 Papa Bear Awards Silver winner for Best Slash Story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bodice Ripper

Hogan meandered towards his usual place at the front of the line for morning roll call. He yawned and stretched sleepily as did the other men stumbling out into the cold. It seemed as though the POWs of Barracks 2 hadn’t slept that well the previous night. Now matter how Schultz asked, ordered, and pleaded the prisoners still took their sweet time getting into line, and then it would seem in their sleepiness they had found themselves in the wrong place in line, and then it was so hard to remember where they were supposed to be.

This carried on long enough that everything was still in shambles by the time Klink flew out of his office, the Bald Eagle of Stalag 13 through and through. He tried to shout at Schultz but Shultz was shouting at the prisoners and the prisoners were shouting at each other and so Klink could not make himself heard above the racket. The Kommandant was reduced to storming forward into the mess of prisoners so he could put himself nose to nose with the senior officer and express his displeasure.

“Hogaaaaan! What is going on here?”

Hogan shrugged, the very picture of a casually uncaring American officer. He was so relaxed you’d never notice the tension in his jaw. He was about to say something flippant that was sure to turn Klink’s face a different color but at that moment Hogan caught a glimpse of something blue weaving towards him.

“All right, men, get it together!” Hogan called and inside of two seconds every POW was in line. Just to rub salt in the wound they stood at proper attention. Hogan smiled at Klink while Klink practically vibrated in rage. The Kommandant was by nature a fool, but he was also the type of fool who knew when to pick his battles. He slithered back to his usual place as Schultz called roll and found all prisoners present and accounted for. Once they had been dismissed the men scattered to all corners of the camp. One by one Stalag 13’s chief troublemakers made their way back to their humble little home and into the Colonel’s humble little office. The latecomer to the roll call was also the last to arrive at the meeting.

“Geeze, Newkirk!” was the greeting the man got as soon as he walked in the door. “Where were you last night? We were worried!”

“Give a bloke a moment, will you, Carter?” Newkirk said, wincing at the volume of the young American’s voice. He closed the door and leaned against the frame, arms crossed across his chest.

“Well, how’d it go?” Kinch asked, forever dependable.

“Well as can be.” Newkirk replied, producing a piece of paper and handing it over to Kinch, “The new codes are right there pretty as you please.”

Newkirk was moving in an odd way and refused to stray too close to any of the men. When the formation had broken up he had taken off in the direction of the de-lousing station. Hogan rubbed his cheek.

“All right, Kinch, get down to the tunnel and let London know we have the codes. Jones is heading out for the sub in two days; he’ll act as courier. Dismissed.”

“Sure thing, Colonel,” Kinch nodded and headed out the door. LeBeau and Carter followed and it was only after they left that Newkirk made any effort to follow.

“Except you, Newkirk,” Hogan ordered.

Newkirk paused and looked like he’d very much like to argue. Hogan decided to skip the argument and quickly crossed the room and shut the door. Conveniently, this put Newkirk with his back against the door frame, a wall to one side, and Hogan’s arm to the other. The Englishman glowered.

“Can I ‘elp you, sir?”

“You might be able to fool the others but you can’t fool me,” Hogan said, annoyed that Newkirk wasn’t coming clean. “With the way you’re moving it’s obvious.”

Newkirk flushed at the words. “What’s obvious, then?”

“That you’re _hurt_ ,” Hogan said, moving past annoyed and into frustrated. He was expecting bruised ribs but instead got a confused look.

“Why would I be ‘urt? From... oh.” The embarrassed look was back. “It’s not what you think.”

Hogan stared Newkirk down. Newkirk shifted uncomfortably and fiddled with the hem of his turtleneck.

“It’s just that I used the frock, you know, since you seem to ‘ave an obsession with the bleeding thing and I, uh, come into some minor technical difficulty which I ‘ave not ‘ad the chance to resolve, and—“

“Newkirk, will you just tell me what is going on?”

The corporal’s face and neck were flushed bright red by that point. Hogan had relaxed a little as whatever Newkirk was hiding seemed to be causing him embarrassment rather than pain. Newkirk had gone out in a dress for safety reasons; maybe he was late because some desperate fellow wouldn’t leave ‘her’ alone. It happened to LeBeau a couple months back. That might account for Newkirk’s behavior.

Newkirk fiddled with his edge of his shirt for a little while longer and nervously looked anywhere but Hogan’s face. At last he made a move which surprised Hogan; Newkirk lifted the hem of his shirt a few inches.

“Bloody thing won’t come off,” Newkirk mumbled.

Hogan leaned back enough to see what the other man was talking about. Then he tried very hard to keep his expression neutral. The corner of his mouth twitched up anyway.

The corporal’s eyes flashed and he pulled his shirt back down. “Well if you’re going to bleeding well be that way then—“

“Newkirk,” Hogan said in his ‘I’m developing a headache with your name on it’ voice. He dropped his arm and walked over to his locker, motioning for Newkirk to follow. “Come over here, will you?”

Hogan opened the locker and pulled out a pocketknife, during which time Newkirk made no move at all. Hogan turned and raised an eyebrow.

“Do you want help getting that off or not?”

Newkirk scurried over, head down and hands worrying at the hem of his shirt again. Hogan had seen that posture many times before but usually it was when Newkirk was putting on for the sake of the mission. Generally when Hogan himself dragged Newkirk into the Kommandant’s office and claimed some bit of mischief or disrespect on the corporal’s part so that they could maneuver the thief into a ‘punishment’ that would give him easier access to a lock needing picking or a safe needing cracking. It was a little disconcerting to see the pose as a genuine display of shame.

Hogan knew that the men weren’t particularly fond of the ‘frock’, as Newkirk had called it, but they weren’t going to stop using it as a viable disguise for certain missions. It was easy enough to swing a man in civilian clothes going into town for a drink or a meal during the day, but when it came to wandering around military buildings after the sun went down a senile old lady would get away with a lot more nosiness than a man would. LeBeau got over his annoyance quickly enough and he’d even sometimes joke about how many numbers he’d picked up along the way to the target and back, but Newkirk remained subdued about it. Not openly against it as he had been that first time but he was still decidedly unhappy about any mission requiring a dress. Hogan thought it might have something to do with the confession Newkirk had made in his flurry of rage after that first mission involving stockings, but he couldn’t exactly bring it up without risking driving a wedge. Newkirk was only just starting to truly get over his problems with authority as they related to following Hogan’s orders.

Newkirk finally shuffled within reach and held out his hand, palm up. It took a moment for Hogan to figure out what the meaning behind that was.

Hogan shook his head. “I don’t want you slicing your hand open.”

“I can handle a ruddy knife,” Newkirk glared.

“It’s an odd angle to be coming at the lacings and I don’t want to risk you damaging those clever fingers of yours,” Hogan countered. “Newkirk, don’t argue. Lift your shirt up and let’s get this off of you.”

Newkirk still looked upset but he held his tongue and did as he was told. He refused to take his shirt off completely but he did lift the hem up to his neck, exposing the plain linen bodice. It didn’t cover the top of his chest and was meant to create the slightest illusion of an actual bust line when worn over a makeshift slip. Hogan guessed that Newkirk had managed to pull the slip out from under the bodice—a good thing as the bodice was a slim one but even Schultz may have noticed the bulk of the slip.

Hogan stepped forward and sussed out the knotted lacings. He managed to slide his fingers underneath the bodice and started nicking away at the makeshift cord starting at the bottom and moving up. It was fraying so much it was no wonder that the knots had fused into a useless felted mass. But then there was only so much London or the Underground could get to the men in Stalag 13 and they had to make due with what they had on hand. Hogan doubted that the material he was carefully slicing through would have been Newkirk’s first choice. There were very few things that bore the stamp of ‘first choice’ in Papa Bear’s operation.

His men. Even if he had the choice of the whole Allied military, Hogan would still choose to lead _these_ men.

Hogan worked slowly and carefully and in complete silence. He could have done the job quicker and just as safely, but then he might have damaged more than an easily replaced lacing and he knew that Newkirk spent a lot of time cursing the thing. A woman’s bodice made for a man wasn’t in the usual skill set of a gentleman’s tailor, thief, forger, spy, and saboteur.

At last the final criss-cross of lacing was cut away. Hogan let it fall to the floor and clicked his pocketknife shut with one hand. He was about to turn away to put the knife away but as Newkirk let his shirt drop Hogan noticed something.

“What’s this?” he asked, pocketing the knife and reaching out to lift the hem of Newkirk’s shirt again. The corporal startled and then froze long enough for Hogan to pull his shirt up. “What happened?”

Newkirk swallowed hard. “What are you on about?”

“There’s a red mark on your ribs,” Hogan leaned down for a better look. Newkirk’s breathing was so shallow as to appear nonexistent. “Are you injured? What happened?”

Hogan reached up and gingerly touched the skin near the mark. There was a sharp intake of breath on Newkirk’s part and Hogan thought that he had pressed too hard on bruised ribs. He looked up to apologize but the expression he saw on Newkirk’s face was not pain. In fact, it was a touch... heavy lidded.

“S’just from the ribbing got to rubbing,” Newkirk said, his voice low. Hogan’s fingers slid a bare inch across skin and Newkirk suddenly jerked away. “Right, thank you for the concern, sir, but I’ve got to be—“ Newkirk ducked down and grabbed the bodice off the floor, “—getting to fixing this bloody thing, so, thank you.”

Newkirk left the room in a hurry, only pausing long enough to roll the bodice up and tuck it into his jacket. Hogan stood there feeling a little stunned—of course that’s what it was. It had been a long war, a long time locked up without easy access to the fairer sex and it was wearing hard on them all. And if inclinations also ran towards the less fair sex then easy access would quickly become a curse as it would be far too dangerous to act on any impulses.

Hogan couldn’t believe how stupid he’d been. He’d known about Newkirk, heard it from the corporal’s own mouth, and didn’t stop to consider what a touch like that would do to a wound up man. Had nothing to do with attraction or compatibility, just the biological equivalent of one of Carter’s mixtures that heated rapidly when shaken. Just chemistry. It didn’t mean anything, but knowing that didn’t make it any easier to ignore.

Newkirk’s chest had been warm. Firm. Real. He smelled like the harsh camp soap and the aftershave that some of the boys in Barracks 9 made up in the same way the boys in Barracks 6 brewed up wine. His eyes were so very _blue_.

Hogan took a deep, measured breath which did not shake at all. It was going to be a long, _long_ war.


End file.
